Boys Will Be Girls?

Catholic Therapists Help Kids Overcome ‘Transgender’ Issues

PHILADELPHIA — When “Ben Carson” was
3 years old, his favorite color was pink and his best friend at nursery school
was a girl. He drew flowers and he loved Snow White.

His parents noticed differences
between him and other boys and they started to recall with concern the little
things he had done since he was a toddler — such as wandering around the house
wearing a towel robe like a dress.

“Then one evening when he was 4
years old, I was putting him into bed and he said, ‘I really don’t want to grow
up,” recalled his father, a government worker in Philadelphia who requested
anonymity to protect his son. “And he said, ‘I really wish I was a girl.’
Something clicked. I just knew something was really wrong with my son. He was
depressed and just not happy with who he was.”

If young Ben lived in Massachusetts,
he could be a candidate for “gender reassignment” treatment at a children’s
hospital there that recently opened a controversial clinic that allows young
children to select their own gender and treats them with hormones. Hearings
that began June 26 at the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee show just
how accepted gender reassignment has become. Democrats on the committee want to
make it illegal for employers to discriminate against adults who change their
gender.

But
Ben’s parents have opted for a different approach, one that conforms to Church
teachings about the nature of human sexuality, by applying psychological and
spiritual techniques to help their son fulfill his masculine identity as he
matures.

Sometimes
little boys playing with their sister’s Barbies or little girls refusing to
wear dresses are just a passing phase. Sometimes, it’s more serious: Mental
health professionals call it Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria syndrome
when the condition of viewing oneself as having an opposite-sex identity is,
among other things, consistent and lasts more than two years.

So-called
“transgender” children are increasingly likely to be channeled into programs
that treat them with hormones and on the road to full “sexual reassignment” —
including amputating surgeries to give them pseudo-genitalia of the opposite
sex.

But
the Carson family’s story illustrates that a Catholic response to gender
confusion may offer the most genuine hope for full healing.

The
Catholic response is rooted in the Church’s theology of the body, which holds
that each person is a unity of body and soul made in the image and likeness of
God. Because of this, the Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) states that “man may not despise his
bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in
honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.”

As
well, in Catholic theology there is no such thing as being “trapped in the
wrong body.” Human beings are created male and female and although humanity’s
fallen nature can result in psychological disunity and confusion regarding an
individual’s sexual identity, every person’s body reveals his or her God-given
gender.

Consequently,
the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that, “except when performed for
strictly therapeutic medical reason, directly intended amputations, mutilations
and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law”
(No. 2297).

“We
lost dominion over creation with original sin,” explained Christopher West,
faculty member and research fellow of the Pennsylvania-based Theology of the
Body Institute. But, he added, “Christ can heal us, he can restore our true
sexual identity even when we are deeply cut off from it.”

But
increasingly, this is not the mainstream medical response to children with
symptoms of Gender Identity Disorder. This year, the Children’s Hospital Boston
made headlines when it opened the doors to its Gender Management Service
Clinic, the first of its kind in the United States dealing exclusively with
biological and psychiatric sexual disorders.

Pre-adolescents
are given hormone injections to delay puberty, and children as young as seven
are encouraged to decide whether they want to be male or female.

The
clinic’s director, endocrinologist Norman Spack, testified before a
Massachusetts State Committee on the Judiciary this March that his office
receives one or two calls a week from parents of children with Gender Identity
Disorder.

Spack
was supporting state Bill 1722, an act to add “gender identity” to existing
anti-discrimination laws. Similar legislation has been introduced in a dozen
states recently. The bill was endorsed by the ACLU and by homosexual and
“transgender” activists.

Other
activists have been lobbying schools.

A
group called TransActive Education and Advocacy has introduced a “Transgender
Children’s Bill of Rights” declaring: “I have the right to be on the outside
who I truly am on the inside … even if I’m really young. … I have the right to
be in a classroom where other students have been taught about the gender
spectrum.”

Some
schools have exceeded activists’ expectations already.

Third-graders
at Chatham Park elementary school in Philadelphia in May had a guidance
counselor explain to them that one of their classmates who “looks like a boy on
the outside, feels like a girl on the inside.”

Another
Colorado elementary school announced this May it would henceforth be treating a
Grade 2 boy as a girl.

The
underlying message is that children with Gender Identity Disorder are born that
way — perhaps as a result of imbalanced hormones in utero —
and they are therefore unchangeable and should be encouraged to embrace this
“transgendered’ sexual identity.

Critics
of this approach argue that Gender Identity Disorder is a psychological
disorder, citing the lack of evidence supporting the hormone theory.

What’s
more, as Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital in
Baltimore, has said “I have witnessed a great deal of damage from
sex-reassignment.”

Wrote McHugh in First Things in
2004:

“The
children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered
prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their
parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions — second-guessing
themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social,
they had imposed on their sons. As for the adults who came to us claiming to
have discovered their ‘true’ sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change
operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and
natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a
life in the other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and
damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than
trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it.”

Catholic
mental-health professionals opt for another approach, one they say has a proven
record of helping kids overcome confusion about their gender identity.

“Effective
therapy brings to an end the suffering of these children; hormones and surgery
do not,” said Richard Fitzgibbons, a Catholic psychiatrist in Conshohocken,
Pa., who has counseled many individuals with Gender Identity Disorder to
appreciate the bodies they were born in.

The
Carsons contacted Fitzgibbons to help their son Ben two years ago when he was
5. They began acting on his advice, shoring up their son’s masculinity in “a
thousand ways” at home.

The
Catholic parents added an affirmation to their son’s daily prayers, “Thank you,
God, for making me a special boy.”

And
Carson started spending more time with his son, focusing on traditional
masculine activities like sports.

“It
has been really hard going sometimes,” says Ben’s father, and he foresees more
effort ahead, especially when Ben hits his teens. But he also sees enormous
progress in his son.

“He’s
so much happier,” Ben’s father said. “If you saw my son today, you would think
he is a well-adjusted happy boy.”

Last
year, the television show “20/20” aired a Barbara Walters segment on “transgender”
children featuring a 7-year-old boy named Jazz whose parents let him “come out”
at his fifth birthday party in a girl’s bathing suit. He wore his hair long and
had a pink, frilly bedroom but sang with a boy’s voice.

Ben’s
father said when he watched the show he saw how his own son, in different
circumstances, might have gone that path.

“I
just know from the bottom of my heart that we are on the right track,” he said.
“And every time I think about it, I thank God that we are Catholic.”

Comments

Thank you so on target! My faith has told me this, but the world is going nuts! What is scary is being told that the new DSM V, supposedly is dropping the “disorder” aspect, just like with homosexuality in the previous version. I felt very much like a man, always participated in sports, and served in the military. It was in realizing over time that God loved me, didn’t make mistakes, and it was ok that I didn’t like panty hose and make up. In embracing my faith and my female identity that I felt truly happy, married and had children. I knew my daughter had rejected God when her father began abandoning us and the Catholic faith while I was deployed to Iraq. I didn’t know she had been set on transitioning and would ask me to support this! Now the challenge is finding a good Catholic mental health professional.

Posted by Eliza Shallcross on Wednesday, Jul 13, 2011 5:16 PM (EDT):

I am neither a Catholic nor a theologian, but it seems to me that if God created body and spirit as one, and that God creates perfection, then who are we to question why God might have chosen to fashion a “female” spirit in a “male” body, or vice versa. Also, purely out of interest, were there no example of girls who identifies with being masculine?

Posted by Catherine Bovey on Tuesday, Jul 5, 2011 6:28 PM (EDT):

What a wonderful article! It comes down to whether God can make a mistake when He creates a person; and of course the answer is NO! Being something God did not intend can never bring you real happiness. I am so happy to hear of therapists who are treating this in the light of God’s teaching. They are combating the culture of death and helping save children from its lethal lies. Thank you for writing this article.

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